The Sibyliad: The Hell Jar: Chapter 1

The Sibyliad is my unfinished "epic" and is composed of several short books. You’ve inspired me both to share and to finish this work.

I’m not sure if epic is the right word.

I began this work in 2020. It predates my study of prose, but most everything I’ve shared here does. The primary exception is Such Was the Epiphany of Theodore Beasley.

The titles of this series are based on the assumption that I have a sense of humor. I’ve kept the “pseudologue,” which I probably would have cut if I were publishing this outside of Substack. The greater sin is that I didn’t understand the need to start a book with a focus on the main character, which I get to after an introduction by Plethon and a short prelude focusing on a monk.

The chapters are grouped thematically in small clusters. There are four in The Hell Jar, and I’ll finish that “incanto” and pause a bit before beginning the next.

I remember almost giving up calling them incantos when Disney announced they were making the movie Encanto, which I ended up loving, by the way. The sections of Dante’s Divine Comedy were divided into songs or cantos. An incanto (Italian) is a spell or enchantment. It seemed clever at the time.

The story is Renaissance Europe discovers the Greek(ish) underworld.

—Thaddeus Thomas

P.S.: I missed publishing this week’s chapter of The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh because of a difficult week at work. It will pick up again next week.

The Sibyliad

Cycle One: Pluto’s Allegory of the Grave

Book One: The Hell Jar

1439

The Florentine Republic

Incanto 1

My dear Daphnis, you think yourself ready to die. Most do, secure in the one belief that’s meant to ease their passage from this world to the next. I could teach them all to fear, if they were ready for anything but comfort and grace.

Stand in the grass outside the Basilica of the Holy Cross or idle curiously along the road; hear me teach; see the thinkers of Florence discover greater illumination outside the church than in. Too bold a claim? Before today, you’d have thought that idea a grave danger, but now, we present Florence the skeletons of freshly dead monks, stripped of skin and muscle, immaculate in their bloodless display.

My words are not the threat.

He secreted himself through the night’s narrow streets and between cramped buildings. The open squares offered breathing room and bedless refuge, each watched over by a church, the hallowed home of every fair soul’s hope, but the monk found little relief. It would’ve been easier to approach San Marco from the north. Once he’d passed through Porta San Gallo at the north-most corner, there would’ve been little between him and the ruins of the church Cosimo de’ Medici was rebuilding to his own glory.

Within those unfinished wall, the city’s judgment waited.

Instead, he’d started as far south as he could without ferrying across the Arno. The parchment had instructed them to cross the city from every direction, bearing witness to the damned. As he drew closer to the piazza, the other monks fell in behind him.

He stopped at the center of the square outside San Marco, a low building bolstered by a false front, a high façade presenting itself as a place of holy refuge but enriched not by God but the power and money of the Florentine elite. The faces that gathered round him were pale and red eyed, heartbroken over the task for which God had called them, and he blessed them for their sorrow and mercy.

“Hidden inside that church is the bowl of God’s wrath, prepared for this moment.” He spoke softly for fear the city would wake. “We are God’s instruments, chosen for this hour.”

They responded with bowed heads and whispered prayers, and the monk turned to face the half-built facade. The light of the moon reflected dimly off its stone, deepening the shadows within.

“Have faith,” he continued, as if speaking to his men and not himself.

New construction and demolished ruin blended into one another amid the shadows and long fingers of moonlight. Beside the church, a monastery boarded the courtyard on three sides. Broad arches opened to a walkway that attached to the cells where Sylverstrine monks once lived.

He ran to the last cell, and the others followed. He felt them standing at the door, watching as he pried out the loose stone. From the cavity beneath, he pulled forth an ancient jar decorated with figures, a frieze depicting mythical tales from long ago.

“What do we do now?” they asked.

“We wait for a visitation.” He carried the vase into the ruined garden. The others followed, watching, waiting for proof. If no angel came, they’d followed the writing of a false prophet, and he’d led them in their folly. If the angel came, if the angel spoke, then the age of man was at an end, and every earthly thing they’d ever known would burn.

He sat with the jar in his lap, his palms pressed against the figures formed on the ceramic surface. He felt the gaze of the men and heard their growing whispers.

“In 1231, Sylvester Gozzolini built his first convent on Montefano near Fabriano.” Again, he kept his voice low but, this time, to silence his men and quieten their doubt. “Gozzolini first destroyed the remains of the pagan temple, a holy act committed without hesitation, but, as Achan coveted the treasures of Jericho, so one of Gozzolini’s followers coveted an old Roman jar--this jar--found among the ruins.”

Their whispering rose and fell again, each man entranced, certainly, not only by the story but by the promise of what was to come.

“Thirty-six years later, Gozzolini’s followers took over the church where we now gather, and that same, disobedient monk took the jar with him. In moving the vessel, his flesh touched its surface for the first time, and an angel spoke. She revealed the purpose of the jar, a passageway into hell. If while holding it, he were to die in peace, it would open the way for him to enter.”

The men stirred, and the monk understood their unrest. No dying man needed passage into hell. Without God’s saving grace, he was guaranteed it.

“If while holding it, he died violently, then the passage would open the other way, out of hell’s depths and into the earth. It was then he understood what the angel was telling him. He held in his hands the bowl of God’s wrath.”

In the cold of the night, a bead of sweat ran down the monk’s nose.

“Where’s the angel?” they asked.

The monk turned upon his challengers. “As you lack faith, so did the men of his order. It was not enough for him to die alone. One death would open a passage through which a man might pass, but to unleash God upon this place, eight would have to make that sacrifice.”

“Why would God need to be unleashed from hell?” they asked.

The monk removed his gloves and touched the relief, tracing the curves with his fingertip. “We’ll know better when it speaks.”

“I hope so. I’ll not act on your word alone.”

The monk beckoned them forward. “Come. Touch. Hear.”

They hesitated. Some backed away. He saw fear in their eyes and knew their faith would fail. He would have to show them, to lead the way for others to follow. God had called them to this moment. Judgment would come.

Dark-haired and clean-shaven, Daphnis Lamonidis inched through the crowd. Outside the Basilica of the Holy Cross, Plethon taught a knowledge lost to the west, but that day several of his most prominent attendees had not come. Gossip swelled in the voids left behind. Tragedy had fallen upon San Marco, something dark and godless.

Daphnis had run the distance from the palace of Rudolfo Peruzzi, and his face was pink from the effort. He sensed the mood of the audience had turned. They looked to Plethon for answers, even though he would know only rumors, same as they. The people of Florence saw Plethon as a foreign font of wisdom, come from the east as counsel to the emperor; and though Plethon was laity, he addressed the Council often, where he focused on logic, knowing his arguments of theology would not be heard. With that gray hair and beard and a robust figure that belied his many years, Daphnis understood why the people, beset by an unknown evil, turned to him for hope.

Daphnis had heard his lectures before, both here and in Constantinople. Early in Plato’s career, he had said evil was a lack of information, a cogent thought for the present. Plethon’s audience, however, would want more.

As if he’d read Daphnis’s thoughts, Plethon spoke. “Plato said that evil was to be out of alignment with the moral order and thus with God. Both politically and personally, evil is a tyrant, and that tyranny strikes first against the tyrant, himself. He is a man out of order with his own creation.”

At last Daphnis stood before the man, leaving a wake of murmurs behind him. He whispered the emperor's command, and Plethon made his apologies to the crowd. As they walked to the palace, many joined them, still eager to hear Plethon’s wisdom.

“Why does God allow evil to exist?” asked one.

“It is society that allows evil, not god,” Plethon said. “If a society is not in revolt against its own nature, neither will be its people.”

Daphnis joined in. “But surely God could make it all go away, if He so chose.”

“As for what the Lord can and cannot do, I will leave that for theologians, but if man can solve the problem of evil, yet chooses not to, why should we expect God to intervene?”

As they approached the palace’s grand roadside entrance, the crowd fell away. Daphnis and Plethon passed alone into the ornate entrance hall and up the stairs into the annex outside the rooms where the emperor held his audiences.

They waited in the annex until attendants bade them enter. They then stood alone in the lusciously colored sitting room, not daring to seat before their emperor had entered through the ornate double doors, received his due honors, and then, having first taken a chair for himself, asked them to join him. If he were to make such an offer at all. With a matter so urgent and time so dire, he would make their audience short and keep them standing. Daphnis was sure of it.

The doors opened, and Emperor John VIII Palaiologos entered, briefly accompanied by two pages who were only there long enough to close the doors behind him. He hurried to Plethon like he were an old friend or, perhaps, even a grandfather of sorts. He was Plethon’s junior by nearly forty years, still a handsome man and made to look rugged and sharp in his portraits.

“Your excellency,” Plethon said, his eyes and smile kind.

In his presence, the nervous emperor viably relaxed. “We were close to reconciliation. You’ve seen it; I’ve heard you comment as much at Maria Nuvella. Then Joseph’s illness took a worrying turn, and now this.”

“And now this,” Plethon said.

“If it’s as horrible as I’ve heard, people will see in it the hand of God or the devil, and either one will dissuade them from their course. I wanted you with me to protect us from the mad reasoning of the clergy, and you’ll never have a better moment than this.”

“And what could be so horrible to impersonate both God and the devil?”

“Monks were murdered at San Marco,” the emperor said.

“I see.”

“I can’t leave this to the Podesta. There’s too much at stake. The Signoria knows of my interest, and the Podesta has agreed for his chief man to meet you at San Marco.” The emperor’s brooding darkened.

“What is it?”

“This man, this soldier in charge of the inquisition, he’s a foreigner. A Muslim, they say. The Latins here aren’t as close to the threat as we. They won’t see it, but he may jeopardize our cause.”

“Whoever the inquisitor, it’s likely the Florentines will keep their discoveries to themselves. When we arrive, whatever evidence they discovered will be gone, but I doubt it will be for the reasons you fear.”

For a moment, Daphnis forgot his place and spoke. “If that’s so, you’ll have no hope of helping, unless the Latin investigators are blindfolded and drunk.”

“Such things are possible, but never probable,” Plethon said.

The emperor waved away the notion. “Perhaps they’ll cooperate, when you remind them how much Medici likes you.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Plethon said.

For a brief moment, the emperor turned his attention to Daphnis. “You’ve heard the bishops argue. One would think the only thing at stake is the wording of our creeds. In the end, it’s come to one word over which we squabble to save or condemn Constantinople.”

Plethon bowed his head, seemingly aware of a closure Daphnis could not see. Daphnis followed his example, and the emperor left the room, unseen pages opening the doors without command.

“The empire needs a better relationship with the west,” Plethon said. “Let’s see if we can keep this murder from getting in the way.”

A carriage awaited them outside, and they endured the ride to San Marco in an uneasy silence. When the carriage lurched to a stop, soldiers escorted them through the church to the courtyard beyond. There, in grass stained black with blood, a monk lay dead, a knife buried in his throat. Skeletons lay nearby, scattered about the courtyard, their bones wet and stringy with connective tissue and tiny clumps of torn flesh, hardly a drop of blood in sight.

Nearby, intestines, livers, and kidneys were gathered in a single pile, along with eyes, fingers, toes, and the occasional penis.

Daphnis turned back to the church, and his stomach regurgitated its contents. “Animals?” he asked, when he regained himself. “They picked the bones clean?”

Plethon looked from one end of the cloister to the other. “A proposal with more problems than solutions.”

Daphnis followed his gaze and attempted to follow his thoughts. He considered his position in the cloister, bordered by the church on one side and the cells on three, all in various stages of destruction and rebirth. In the northern corridor, two doors allowed access to the monastery without passing through the church.

Three of the equi stood nearby, watching and nearly succeeding in holding back their laughter. “You ever see animals clean a body like this, Tommaso?” asked one of the others.

“My dog back home does the same thing. Stacks the leftover bits in a tidy little pile.”

“These are the big brains they sent from the Council,” said the third. “Listen up and learn from their genius.”

“We’re listening,” said Tommaso. “What particular beast do you think is guilty of these murders?”

“The animals came after,” Daphnis said. ‘The killer is human.”

Plethon walked to the exterior doors, which he studied for several moments before opening first one and then the other and peering out to the road, which led directly to Porta San Gallo and the countryside beyond. “They’re right. Your theory doesn’t account for the pyramid of rejected body parts.”

“Maybe it’s like you said,” Daphnis said. “Someone’s destroyed the evidence.”

“Should I bring in my horse for questioning?” asked Tommaso.

Plethon stepped into the road, his gaze focused at his feet. He called back. “Do we know to which monastery the victims belonged?”

Dhanis looked back at the equi.

Tommaso had just opened his grinning mouth to speak when the self-satisfied smile vanished. He and the others stood upright and squared their shoulders.

Out of the church walked Firat, the Black captain of the court assigned over the San Marco inquisition, who stood a little shorter than some but whose arms and shoulders looked like he was carved from stone.

“It’s a small order to the north,” Firat said. “This massacre must have cut their numbers by a third.”

It took Daphnis an uncertain moment to understand what his eyes were seeing. Firat was foreign, which was the way of justice in Florence. The highest offices of the court were all hired from outside the Republic and kept for too short a period to allow for corruption, but Firat was something more. His being Black was unusual in itself, but Daphnis recognized aspects of his speech.

Then he remembered what the emperor had said. This was the man.

“Judging by the robe fragments, they’re not Dominican or Sylverstrian,” Plethon said. “How are they connected to San Marco?”

“They’re not,” Firat said.

Daphnis drew closer, forgetting to hide his critical investigation of the inquisitor. Firat’s statuesque features fit well among the Florentines but was still clearly beyond, not just beyond Florence but beyond the peninsula. He was Ottoman Turk or maybe Egyptian. The war for Constantinople had followed them here.

If Plethon had noticed, he seemed not to care. “We need last night’s records of people coming and going from the city. Pay close attention to San Gallo. The survivor left in that direction.”

“Survivor?” Firat asked.

Daphnis tagged along as Plethon led Firat back into the courtyard and the one body still in possession of its flesh. “The survivor was kneeling here, by the victim’s head, and his robes will have the blood stains to show it. You can see traces of it left behind at the door.”

“Could just as well be our killer,” Firat said.

“Perhaps,” Plethon said. “The killing raises many questions. To find answers, we need to talk to the one man who lived through it.”

“I still say animals got to the bodies,” Daphnis said. “It’s the only logical explanation.”

“Wouldn’t explain the lack of blood,” Firat said.

Daphnis wondered if perhaps Firat had ordered the area cleaned before their arrival. He couldn’t make so bold an accusation, not yet. Instead, he asked, “What would explain it?”

Firat bent down beside one of the skeletons. “I’ve no idea, unless the six were murdered elsewhere and carried here, but that’s too absurd for consideration.”

“If it explains the facts before us,” Daphnis said, “any seeming absurdity shouldn’t matter.”

Plethon looked away from the bodies to the repairs and construction begun on the church and cloister. “If our explanations for the facts lack logic, then we don’t have all the facts.”

The ground where they stood was once, and would soon be again, a formal garden, and Medici had hired his personal architect to design the buildings. It seemed an odd contrast, the wealth of the building and the monks’ vow of poverty.

As Daphnis considered these things, an officer approached and whispered to Firat. Unable to make out their conversation, Daphnis turned back to Plethon. “In the end, it’ll be animals. Wait and see.”

“There are more bodies,” said Plethon.

Daphnis fell silent and looked back to Firat. Plethon’s aged ears couldn’t have heard their conversation. It was impossible.

“You suggested we check the gates,” Firat said. “It was one of the first things I ordered, and the night watch at San Gallo was missing.”

“And what of the bodies?” whispered Daphnis.

“Apparently,” whispered Plethon, “the night watch is no longer missing.”

“Eight monks entered the city; one left,” Firat said. “His departure is the last recorded entry at San Gallo. You still think our missing monk was merely a survivor?”

Plethon looked as if he might laugh. “More so now.”

“More so?” Firat asked.

“Do you have the monk’s name?” Plethon asked.

“Conrad da Osimo.”

“If Conrad killed your men, it was not to cover his departure. Have you sent someone to fetch him?”

“I was just now set to do so.”

“Let’s see the new-found bodies before you proceed,” Plethon said. “Some light might yet be shed that will illuminate your path.”

Firat gave orders to secure the church. “After you’ve seen the bodies, you can make your report to the Council, leaving me to my duty. Assure the emperor and the Medici, both, I’ll soon have the man responsible for these crimes.”

Instead of turning toward the gate, as Daphnis expected, they headed south, into the city. Mk

Daphnis walked close to Plethon, and his mind sought refuge in thoughts of home. Florence grew along both banks of the river Arno, but Constantinople occupied the coasts of three land masses where the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus flowed into the Sea of Mormora. Once home to a million people, its numbers had dwindled in recent centuries, more so as fear of the Ottomans grew, until now its people were little greater in size than Florence. At times, Florence felt bigger, all those people squeezed into a city a fifth the size of Constantinople.

There was less green space within Florence’s walls, and at times it felt like nothing but narrow streets lined by buildings and their red-tiled roofs. They walked down one such street and entered a white-faced building much like so many others. They climbed the stairs, not to the first floor or even the third, but all the way to the roof.

“Residents found the bodies,” Firat said. “The story will be all over the city by now.”

The bright sun of an early afternoon stood in contrast to the dark scene. High atop the vaulted red roof, two bodies hanged, impaled, one of them missing large chunks of flesh.

Plethon broke the silence. “You were more right than I would have imagined, Daphnis.”

“I was?”

“It’s animal-like behavior, or, at least, reminiscent of animals stashing a kill for later.”

Firat looked skeptical. “You think someone is eating these men?”

Plethon examined the roof tiles, as if considering a climb up for a better look. “I think it’s worth keeping men here overnight, armed and watchful. It seems rational to say this alters how you’ll approach Conrad, the monk.”

“How so?”

“He fled through San Gallo. Two bodies were hanged from rooftops deep within the city. One would seem to have little to do with the other.”

“He must be questioned,” Firat said.

“Leave him to us for today,” Plethon said. “Daphnis and I will make the journey, accompanied by a unit of your men, and if our results aren’t satisfactory, we’ll bring him to you in the morning.”

Daphnis hated to take Firat’s side in the matter, but he had no choice. “Surely, he’ll run.”

“He’s in the only place in the world where he feels safe, and that’s where we need to talk to him. It may be our only hope of getting any real insight.”

Firat considered them a moment and then nodded. “You may question him, but I’ll lead the unit.”

Daphnis looked again to the bodies, limp and pale. The tiled roof spread about around them like a river of blood, and he wondered if these bodies, too, had been drained.

#

In the short time Daphnis had lived in Florence, he’d witnessed change, an ebb and flow between a focus on the desires of man and the dictates of the church. Just that year, they had passed a law limiting embroidery and lace to sleeves alone. Among the Council, it was seen as a victory for propriety. Daphnis never said aloud that those same men would be the last to be accused of modesty.

The monks were different, as were nuns--women who became cloistered for God when being cloistered for their family took an undesirable turn. Maybe that wasn’t always the motivations for a woman’s vows, but it would soon be for one he knew. While Plethon reported to the emperor, Daphnis visited the woman and her father in their villa just beyond Porta San Gallo. An elegant little home, it would have spoken of wealth and power, if it were not their only remaining property.

The old man, Nannoccio di Lodovico, was the last scion of a failed banking family; his fortunes had fallen as Medici’s rose, but he welcomed Daphnis’s interest. For a man down on his luck, a visit from the emperor’s secretary was as good as a visit from royalty.

They sat in the garden, and Nannoccio’s daughter, Alessandra, brought the wine. Her eyes were intelligent and fierce. Her dark hair and sun-kissed skin had some time ago been robbed of their radiance, but he saw in her a beauty that had lost the softness of childhood only to find the harsh grief of a stolen motherhood.

She stayed at her father’s side.

The pair lived closer to the northernmost gate than anyone, and while the chances of them having seen anything were slim, Daphnis needed no answers, only a pretext. Women weren’t allowed to live on their own, and when Alessandra’s husband died, her in-laws took her son and sent her away to her father, who now sought to marry her off one last time.

If Alessandra’s threats of becoming a nun were to be taken literally, Daphnis thought it a shame, an awful waste of a fair countenance.

Until that moment came, he intended to spend as much time in her company--and in her father’s garden--as he could. Now more than ever, haunted by the memory of those bloodless bodies, Daphnis needed a little wine and a little beauty, and Alessandra seemed wise enough to understand what her father did not. Daphnis had no intention of marrying a Florentine.

Whatever pang of guilt that truth pricked within his conscience, the wine soon washed away.

We deserve no such god such as Christ represents, and for over a thousand years our actions and inactions have proven it so. There was a time in Greece when we knew better and worshiped gods whose temperaments and failures reflected our own. They possessed every human emotion and insecurity, the power to act on any whim, and the arrogance to believe themselves forever justified. There are few noble stories among the gods, and those that begin well become twisted parodies of their promise.

So it is with us.

The horrid little man had returned. Alessandra barely tolerated his presence most days, but now she had no patience at all, not after what she’d seen.

She’d been witness to an angel.

On fire.

—Thaddeus Thomas

Table of Contents: The Sibyliad